Celebration For All, Boynton`s Black Citizens Say

February 2, 1986|By James H. Tolpin, Staff Writer

BOYNTON BEACH — All along Seacrest Boulevard Saturday, the city`s black residents stood in front of homes, relaxed on lawn chairs and car hoods and cooked out as part of the sixth annual celebration of Black Awareness Day.

Small groups of teen-age girls strolled with a parade of cars and vans that headed south, through the heart of the black community, from Northwest 17th Avenue to the city`s Civic Center at 128 E. Ocean Ave.

Although nearly all the hundreds of people on the street and at the Civic Center were black, organizers of the parade and the day`s activities said Black Awareness Day is important for everyone.

``It`s about what Martin Luther King was trying to strive for -- for all us, not just blacks, but all of us. That we are brothers. That we share each other`s dreams,`` said Councilman Ezell Hester.

Several people along the parade route said the day`s celebration -- with its theme, ``Movin` On`` -- led them to think of their pride in the city.

``I love it because of the progress, the orderly growth of Boynton Beach,`` said the Rev. Randolph Lee, pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church and one of two grand marshals.

Leonard Coleman, a 24-year-old safety for the Indianapolis Colts, served as the other grand marshal. He said he spends half the year in Boynton Beach and the other half, during football season, in Indianapolis.

For Nekori Skinner, one of eight girls in the coronation court on the Miss Black Awareness float, the day meant taking pride in herself.

``It`s a special day,`` said the 9-year-old Skinner. ``It makes me feel important.``

Pride in the capabilities of the black community is what the day meant to Norman Hands, a supervisor at the Juvenile Detention Center on 45th Street in West Palm Beach.

``This means a great deal to me,`` said Hands, 45, who watched the parade with his friend Locksley Thompson.

``It shows they`re coming along, the blacks, that we can organize. To show black kids the things that could be done,`` he said.

That idea, to highlight black achievement, spawned the original Black Awareness Day back in 1980, said Lillian Artis, who said she helped put together the first parade along with former Mayor Edward Harmening and Bill Simmons, director of the Institute of Black Culture at the University of Florida.

The achievements to be highlighted Saturday included dancing and singing groups and speeches by master of ceremonies Edward Rodgers, a Palm Beach County Circuit Court judge, and by William Gary, the attorney for the survivors of a family of seven that was electrocuted last year by a downed power line in Jupiter.